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Thursday, April 6, 2017

Trump joins warmonger NY Times on key issue of Syria 'regime change,' NY Times returns favor by citing their new pal Trump as reliable source on Syria. Globalist NY Times favors silencing and enslavement of US taxpayers to Endless War profiteers-Robert Parry, Consortium News, 4/5/17. EU official got propaganda ball rolling early (All pro-war propaganda is aimed at US taxpayers without whom Endless War profiteers couldn't exist)

"Exclusive: The U.S. government and the mainstream
media rushed to judgment again, blaming the Syrian government for a new
poison-gas attack and ignoring other possibilities, reports Robert
Parry."

"With the latest hasty judgment about Tuesday’s poison-gas deaths in a
rebel-held area of northern Syria,the mainstream U.S. news media once
more reveals itself to be a threat to responsible journalism andto the
future of humanity.Again, we see the troubling pattern of verdict
first, investigation later, even when that behavior can lead to a
dangerous war escalation and many more deaths.

Before a careful evaluation of the evidence about Tuesday’s tragedy
was possible, The New York Times and other major U.S. news outlets had
pinned the blame for the scores of dead on the Syrian government of
Bashar al-Assad. That revived demands that the U.S. and other nations
establish a “no-fly zone” over Syria, which would amount to launching
another “regime change” war and would put America into a likely hot war
with nuclear-armed Russia
.Even as basic facts were still being assembled about Tuesday’s
incident, we, the public, were prepped to disbelieve the Syrian
government’s response that the poison gas may have come from rebel
stockpiles that could have been released either accidentally or
intentionally causing the civilian deaths in a town in Idlib Province.

One possible scenario was that Syrian warplanes bombed a rebel
weapons depot where the poison gas was stored, causing the containers to
rupture. Another possibility was a staged event by increasingly
desperate Al Qaeda jihadists who are known for their disregard for
innocent human life.

While it’s hard to know at this early stage what’s true and what’s
not, these alternative explanations, I’m told, are being seriously
examined by U.S. intelligence. One source cited the possibility that
Turkey had supplied the rebels with the poison gas (the exact type still
not determined) for potential use against Kurdish forces operating in
northern Syria near the Turkish border or for a terror attack in a
government-controlled city like the capital of Damascus.

On Tuesday,the Times assigned two of its most committed
anti-Syrian-government propagandists to cover the Syrian poison-gas
story, Michael B. Gordon and Anne Barnard....

Gordon has been at the front lines of the neocon “regime change” strategies for years. He co-authored the Times’ infamous aluminum tube story
of Sept. 8, 2002, which relied on U.S. government sources and Iraqi
defectors to frighten Americans with images of “mushroom clouds” if they
didn’t support President George W. Bush’s upcoming invasion of Iraq.
The timing played perfectly into the administration’s advertising
“rollout” for the Iraq War.

Of course, the story turned out to be false and to have unfairly
downplayed skeptics of the claim that the aluminum tubes were for
nuclear centrifuges, when the aluminum tubes actually were meant for
artillery. But the article provided a great impetus toward the Iraq War,
which ended up killing nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis.

Gordon’s co-author, Judith Miller, became the only U.S. journalist
known to have lost a job over the reckless and shoddy reporting that
contributed to the Iraq disaster. For his part, Gordon continued serving
as a respected Pentagon correspondent.

Gordon’s name also showed up in a supporting role on the Times’ botched “vector analysis,”
which supposedly proved that the Syrian military was responsible for
the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin-gas attack. The “vector analysis” story of Sept.
17, 2013, traced the flight paths of two rockets, recovered in suburbs
of Damascus back to a Syrian military base 9.5 kilometers away.

The article became the “slam-dunk” evidence that the Syrian
government was lying when it denied launching the sarin attack. However,
like the aluminum tube story, the Times’ ”vector analysis” ignored
contrary evidence, such as the unreliability of one azimuth from a
rocket that landed in Moadamiya because it had struck a building in its
descent. That rocket also was found to contain no sarin, so it’s
inclusion in the vectoring of two sarin-laden rockets made no sense.

But the Times’ story ultimately fell apart when rocket scientists
analyzed the one sarin-laden rocket that had landed in the Zamalka area
and determined that it had a maximum range of about two kilometers,
meaning that it could not have originated from the Syrian military base. C.J. Chivers, one of the co-authors of the article, waited until Dec.
28, 2013, to publish a halfhearted semi-retraction. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis.”]

Gordon was a co-author of another bogus Times’ front-page story on
April 21, 2014, when the State Department and the Ukrainian government
fed the Times two photographs that supposedly proved that a group of
Russian soldiers – first photographed in Russia – had entered Ukraine,
where they were photographed again.

However, two days later, Gordon was forced to pen a retraction
because it turned out that both photos had been shot inside Ukraine,
destroying the story’s premise. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Retracts Russian-Photo Scoop.”]

Gordon perhaps personifies better than anyone how mainstream
journalism works. If you publish false stories that fit with the
Establishment’s narratives, your job is safe even if the stories blow up
in your face.However, if you go against the grain – and if someone
important raises a question about your story – you can easily find
yourself out on the street even if your story is correct.

No Skepticism Allowed

Anne Barnard, Gordon’s co-author on Tuesday’s Syrian poison-gas
story, has consistently reported on the Syrian conflict as if she were a
press agent for the rebels, playing up their anti-government claims
even when there’s no evidence.

For instance, on June 2, 2015, Barnard, who is based in Beirut,
Lebanon, authored a front-page story that pushed the rebels’ propaganda
theme that the Syrian government was somehow in cahoots with the Islamic State though even the U.S. State Department acknowledged that it had no confirmation of the rebels’ claims.

When Gordon and Barnard teamed up to report on the latest Syrian tragedy,
they again showed no skepticism about early U.S. government and Syrian
rebel [terrorist] claims that the Syrian military was responsible for intentionally
deploying poison gas.

Perhaps for the first time, The New York Times cited President Trump
as a reliable sourcebecause he and his press secretary were saying what
the Times wanted to hear–that Assad must be guilty.

Gordon and Barnard also cited the controversial White Helmets,
the rebels’ Western-financed civil defense group that has worked in
close proximity with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and has come under suspicion
of staging heroic “rescues” but is nevertheless treated as a fount of
truth-telling by the mainstream U.S. news media.

In early online versions of the Times’ story, a reaction from the Syrian military was buried deep in the article around the 27th
paragraph, noting: “The government denies that it has used chemical
weapons, arguing that insurgents and Islamic State fighters use toxins
to frame the government or that the attacks are staged.”

The following paragraph mentioned the possibility that a Syrian
bombing raid had struck a rebel warehouse where poison-gas was stored,
thus releasing it unintentionally.

But the placement of the response was a clear message that the Times
disbelieved whatever the Assad government said. At least in the version
of the story that appeared in the morning newspaper, a government
statement was moved up to the sixth paragraph although still surrounded
by comments meant to signal the Times’ acceptance of the rebel version.

After noting the Assad government’s denial, Gordon and Barnard added,
“But only the Syrian military had the ability and the motive to carry
out an aerial attack like the one that struck the rebel-held town of
Khan Sheikhoun.”

But they again ignored the alternative possibilities. One was that a
bombing raid ruptured containers for chemicals that the rebels were
planning to use in some future attack, and the other was that Al Qaeda’s
jihadists staged the incident to elicit precisely the international
outrage directed at Assad as has occurred.

Gordon and Barnard also could be wrong about Assad being the only one
with a motive to deploy poison gas. Since Assad’s forces have gained a
decisive upper-hand over the rebels, why would he risk stirring up
international outrage at this juncture? On the other hand, the desperate
rebels might view the horrific scenes from the chemical-weapons
deployment as a last-minute game-changer.

Pressure to Prejudge

None of this means that Assad’s forces are innocent, but a serious
investigation ascertains the facts and then reaches a conclusion, not
the other way around.

However, to suggest these other possibilities will, I suppose, draw
the usual accusations about “Assad apologist,” but refusing to prejudge
an investigation is what journalism is supposed to be about.

The Times, however, apparently has no concern anymore for letting the
facts be assembled and then letting them speak for themselves. The
Times weighed in on Wednesday with an editorial entitled “A New Level of Depravity From Mr. Assad.”

Another problem with the behavior of the Times and the mainstream
media is that by jumping to a conclusion they pressure other important
people to join in the condemnations and that, in turn, can prejudice the
investigation while also generating a dangerous momentum toward war.

Once the political leadership pronounces judgment, it becomes
career-threatening for lower-level officials to disagree with those
conclusions. We’ve seen that already with how United Nations
investigators accepted rebel claims about the Syrian government’s use of
chlorine gas, a set of accusations that the Times and other media now
report simply as flat-fact.

Yet, the claims about the Syrian military mixing in canisters of
chlorine in supposed “barrel bombs” make little sense because chlorine
deployed in that fashion is ineffective as a lethal weapon but it has
become an important element of the rebels’ propaganda campaign.

U.N. investigators, who were under intense pressure from the United
States and Western nations to give them something to use against Assad,
did support rebel claims about the government using chlorine in a couple
of cases, but the investigators also received testimony from residents
in one area who described the staging of a chlorine attack for
propaganda purposes.

One might have thought that the evidence of one staged attack would
have increased skepticism about the other incidents, but the U.N.
investigators apparently understood what was good for their careers, so
they endorsed a couple of other alleged cases despite their inability to
conduct a field investigation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “UN Team Heard Claims of Staged Chemical Attacks.”]

Now, that dubious U.N. report is being leveraged into this new
incident, one opportunistic finding used to justify another. But the
pressing question now is:

"At least 58 people were killed in a
horrific gas attack in the Idlib Governorate this morning. However, even
before investigations could be conducted and for evidence to emerge,
Federica Mogherini, the Italian politician High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, condemned
the Syrian government stating that the “Assad regime bears responsibility for ‘awful’ Syria ‘chemical’ attack.”

Within seconds of exposure to sarin, the affects of the gas begins to
target the muscle and nervous system. There is an almost immediate
release of the bowels and the bladder, and vomiting is induced. When
sarin is used in a concentrated area, it has the likelihood of killing
thousands of people. Yet, such a dangerous gas, and the White Helmets
are treating bodies with little concern to their exposed skin. This has
to raise questions.

It also raises the question why a “doctor” in a hospital full of
victims of sarin gas has the time to tweet and make video calls. This
will probably be dismissed and forgotten however.

It is known that about 250 people from Majdal and Khattab were
kidnapped by Al-Qaeda terrorists last week. Local sources have claimed
that many of those dead from the chemical weapons were those from Majdal
and Khattab."...